


Saving Rose Tyler

by RowWithAChipNPin



Series: Torchwood in Broadchurch [2]
Category: Broadchurch, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Coping, DI Hardy is still not the Doctor/Handy, Deathfic, Depression, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/M, Hospitals, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Sequel, Swearing, Terminal Illnesses, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2014-03-30
Packaged: 2017-12-24 17:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 15,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowWithAChipNPin/pseuds/RowWithAChipNPin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Daleks have been defeated and the Earth is saved, but all is not right for Rose. She's trapped in Pete's World again, and she is not okay. After her world changes for the worst, she returns to Broadchurch and DI Hardy, and brings with her a question that will haunt him worse than when she disappeared: can he save her? And what from?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Broken

**Author's Note:**

> Back by popular demand—no, wait, that's not right. I felt bad for leading you guys on about a relationship between Hardy and Rose, and I did want to write a sequel…I warn you, this one is going to be rather more depressing.
> 
> When I started uploading The Blonde in the Leather Jacket, I'd already written the entire story. This time 'round, I have the first few chapters done, but the rest are still in the works. So, the in-between updates might be a little erratic. Bear with me, will you?
> 
> I'll update next Sunday, or when I get some reviews, whichever comes first.
> 
> So, shall we begin?
> 
> Allons-y!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose returns to Pete's World.

Rose Tyler is a lot of things—daughter, sister, friend, girlfriend, shop girl, companion, time traveler, Defender of the Earth, Bad Wolf, professional meddler—also crazy, depending on who you ask.

But, she is not a fool.

She considers herself a smart girl, even though she didn't finish school and never got her A-levels; not book smart, maybe, but she is street smart, and that's what counts when you're running across the universe with a madman, getting in and out of trouble. She gets where she's not supposed to and can talk her way out of just about anything, and for what she can't, she's got a very big gun and her team to back her up. She's smart enough to have led the dimensional cannon development, and no matter what that pompous supervisor said, it wasn't because Pete's her step-dad. It was because she's clever and determined as hell, and she'd learned enough from the Doctor to understand most of this tech.

And all that paid off in the end, didn't it, because she made it back to the other side. Rose made it back to her Doctor. She hugged her mother and little Tony, kissed Jake and her head researcher, Ianto Jones, on the cheeks, and let those scientists catapult her molecules through a tattered rip in the universe. She was really glad she was right and it didn't kill her, because she found her Doctor again. She knew she would, she'd always known; there was nothing that could keep them apart, not even the universe and the fate of all reality.

Throwing her arms around him and feeling him—solid and _real—_ was almost worth what she left behind.

Because she was ashamed to know that relief for finding him was the second thing that she felt when she finally came face to face with the Doctor; the first was a pang in her chest and a feeling of longing for a rough and awkward detective in a boring little village— _Alec._

How could Rose ever admit to the Doctor— _her_ Doctor, the man who showed her the stars and introduced her to a whole new kind of living—that she was wishing for another man?

When she volunteered to go establish a Torchwood operation in the Dorset town of Broadchurch, she'd never heard of Danny Latimer or the Sandbrook Murders or Detective Inspector Alec Hardy. She'd had no idea what she was walking into; she'd just wanted to be near the Rift. If things were slipping through into the town, maybe she could find a way to the other side. Broadchurch could have been her way home.

Instead, she found someone nearly identical to the second man she'd called Doctor. For a moment, when she first saw him leaving the hotel, she thought she'd managed to cross dimensions without noticing. She was so excited, heart pounding and blood singing with the memory of all that waited beyond blue doors; she even took a step off the pavement.

Then, reality caught up with her and she stopped herself; it took actual, physical effort to keep herself from running across the road and throwing herself into his arms. No, that wasn't her Doctor; she could see the differences. His hair was a floppy mess, not the carefully styled mess she knew; he was pale and thin, and had a fair amount of scruff on his face. Now, it looked good, but it meant that he, whoever he was, was not the Doctor.

He was Detective Inspector Alec Hardy, and he was not the Doctor.

She watched him, followed him, and enjoyed teasing him more than she should have; but, she did feel bad when she saw exactly how far he was going to track her down. Jake thought it was hilarious to watch the guy go nuts, Mickey wanted to push the guy into the ocean for shits and giggles, and Ianto rolled his eyes and called them both insufferable. Rose thought it was kinda mean to make him think he was crazy.

Maybe he could help, she said; maybe, he could be the inside man with the police. He could keep an eye out for the weird stuff, and give them the head's up.

He's not the Doctor, they said, don't let your heart get in the way of your job. He can't help us, he doesn't even know about us.

Since when did she refrain from doing something just because it could go wrong? She told the Detective Inspector anyway, and somewhere along the way, Rose Tyler started to fall for DI Alec Hardy.

She was glad, of course, that she found somebody. She wasn't _in love_ with him, not yet, but she could see it. For the first time since Canary Wharf, she could see having a life on this side. Alec was a good man. She deserved a good man. The Doctor would understand that.

He _would_ understand, right?

There were a million chances for her to tell him, even with all the fighting and running for their lives, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. Either she would get to stay on that side and she would move on, eventually forgetting Alec, or she would be sent back again. She didn't know which would be worse.

It was incredible, fighting and defending alongside Team TARDIS again. She'd missed it; fighting Cybermen and the odd violent visitor wasn't nearly as exciting as saving the world constantly. And seeing old friends again? Sarah Jane and Harriet Jones, and her Captain Jack, of course; it was better than anything she'd imagined. For the first time in years, she felt home.

Of course, it couldn't last, because that would have been too damn easy, and that's not how life works.

At the end of everything, Rose is right back where she was after Canary Wharf: on her knees in the sand on that _damned_ beach, sobbing until she can barely breathe because the _Doctor left her. Again._ And there isn't a thing she can do about it, because she can't exactly argue with the safety of reality itself, no matter how much it hurts. She hears her superphone ringing, knows she should pick it up; by now, everyone at this side's Torchwood knows it's over. It's probably Jake or her mum, callin' to find out what happened, if she's even still alive.

She can't bring herself to answer it, though. She doesn't want to talk to anyone; she just wants to be alone for a little while. She wants to get away from all the aliens and pressure, and she wouldn't mind some chips, because crossing dimensional borders really takes it out of a girl. So, she just sits there and cries until the tears just won't come, and then she falls asleep, curled up on the damp sand in a too-big coat that she swiped from Jack. She doesn't want to _think._ She doesn't want to _feel._

She doesn't want to remember how, for the slightest moment, she had the opportunity to live out the rest of her life with a _human_ Doctor, someone who could spend the rest of his life loving her.

She doesn't _want_ to, but she does, and it hurts more than any flesh wound.

Rose Tyler cries, and something inside her breaks.


	2. Not Okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the love story gets a little more complicated. And ironic.

It's three months and Rose knows that she's not okay.

She tells everyone she is, pretends she is, but she isn't. She is really _not okay._ Headaches, hot flashes, aches and pains, and the constant feeling that there's someone— _something—_ watching. Watching and waiting. She doesn't know what it is or what it's waiting for, but every molecule of her being was screaming _bad._

Even as she's going through life like normal, living firmly in the state of denial and pointedly ignoring her coworkers' concern, she knows it's getting worse. She can barely sleep through the night because of terrible nightmares that she can barely remember; the headaches are a near constant, and she's carrying a bottle of ibuprofen in her purse, downing the pills like Tic-Tacs.

They're worried about her, and she feels guilty. Her mum wants her to talk to a therapist, Pete thinks she should take time off; Jake agrees, but he's a suck up and at least he buys her lunch when he tells her what to do. They're right, of course. She's empty inside, and whatever she's doing, it can hardly be called living.

And when her hand trembles so badly that she drops her coffee and the cup's shattering is a thunderclap, when the world spins like a carousel and her legs buckle, when she faints in the middle of a presentation—she knows she can't avoid it any longer.

Torchwood's medical team spends the better part of a week examining her. Poking, prodding, X-Rays, IVs, injections, MRIs—you name it, they try it. They draw blood so many times that she looks like a junkie. And Jake and Ianto are there the entire time as "moral support"; she's not sure whether to be pleased or annoyed that her team is so protective. But, it's better than her mum, who fluctuates between treating Rose like glass and acting like she's a pariah. Rose doesn't hold it against her; she wouldn't like to be around her either.

It doesn't matter in the end, what anyone else thinks or says or does, because it wouldn't change anything. All the tests lead the med team to a singular, unfortunate, but not unforeseen conclusion:

Rose is dying.

It's not a surprise; her health's been declining since before her trip back to the other dimension. It started as headaches; they say it will get progressively worse until she finally just…stops. They don't know what's wrong—it's like nothing they've ever seen before—but from what they can tell, her body is turning against itself. She doesn't understand most of the medical jargon; it was something about white blood cells and cellular mutation, and some kind of radiation no one recognizes. For all that, she knows that her headaches are starting to form a resistance to the painkillers, she fluctuates between insomnia and exhaustion, and her stomach is starting a rebellion against solid food.

She spends a week in bed wallowing in self-pity, and then says screw it and decides to do something instead.

Torchwood does the best it can for her, of course; after all, aside from being Gemini's stepdaughter, she was the Doctor's Companion with a capital C. She's their only connection to a god among men. If the Rift ever opens again and the Doctor returns to find that Torchwood did not do absolutely everything, there will be hell to pay and everyone on This Side will know why he is called the Oncoming Storm. But, Torchwood's best boils down to physical examinations, more tests than she can stand, and trial and error medication.

After an Incident that is not discussed and results in the lock down of all pointy objects, it is very clear that there is more error than acceptable.

She can't blame them for doing everything they can, even if they are failing to save her. There are good and bad days—days when she can barely leave her bed and days when she almost forgets that anything's wrong at all. For a little while, a series of radiation treatments seem to work, and she gets better.

Then she gets worse that she was before, and they have to accept that there is nothing they can do except make her comfortable.

Rose waits all of three days before packing up her flat and handing Pete her transfer papers. He takes them without saying a word.

On the day she plans to leave, she walks into the garage to find Jake leaning against her car, bag at his feet and keys in his hand. She doesn't bother asking how he got them.

"I'm coming with you," he says, and there's no room for argument or objection.

She wasn't planning on objecting, anyway. She wants him with her. They, and Mickey, became quite close after Rose and Mickey got stuck on this side, and even though she finds Jake's overprotective streak a bit annoying, she's grateful that he refuses to forsake her. She thinks it was Rickey's death that made the bleached blond so protective of his loved ones; should she feel guilty for being happy?

She doesn't know how long she has left; she does know that she's getting weaker, and she wants her big brother to be there when she can't take it anymore.

If she's going die no matter what happens, if it can happen at any time, then there's only one place for her to go. There's one person she wants to see before she bites it.

_Alec._

Rose Tyler is going back to Broadchurch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't kill me! *fends off pitchforks and screwdrivers*
> 
> Honestly, did you think I'd make it easy for them? Ha! If you're looking for a love story, this is definitely not the place. Oh, Rose and Alec will get together, but I am going to make it as hard on them as possible. Starting with the incredible irony of his falling for a dying girl.
> 
> Again, don't kill me!
> 
> I'll update next Sunday, or when I get some reviews, whichever comes first.


	3. Back in Broadchurch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose Tyler returns to Broadchurch

She settles back into Broadchurch rather quickly, all things considered.

She and Jake move back into the house set aside for them by Torchwood—56 Old Church Road—and manage to fall back into a semblance of normality. Jake hates the idea of her doing any strenuous physical work, but she manages to convince him to let her do the grocery shopping and some housework with minimal argument and a brief pulling of rank. Also, a guilt trip. She’ll make it up to him later, if she lives that long.

Of course and with no surprise, she’s benched from active field work, but that’s alright. For the better, really. She joined the Preachers—and, later, Torchwood—to help people. She can’t do that if she’s liable to keel over at any moment. So, she stays at the office and does research, paperwork, and archiving; she organizes assignments and identifies threats.

And for almost a month, she manages to avoid being seen by anyone who would recognize her as the same woman who vanished last year. Wearing a perception filter almost 24/7 certainly helped with that.

It’s not easy, because she wants nothing more to run up to Alec and spill everything; she left him a letter explaining what she could at the time, and Jake swears up and down that he delivered it in person, but she has no way of knowing if her DI read it. _Her DI—_ when did she start thinking of Alec as _her_ DI? She likes the sound and feel of it in her head, but she daren’t say it to his face.

But, every time she sees him on the street and takes a step towards him, she has to stop herself, and it’s just like the first time.

_A figure in her periphery caught her attention; the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. Hand on the blaster hanging at her hip, she turned her head and— The air whooshed past her lips in the bastard child of a gasp and a moan. For several long seconds, she entertained the prospect that she’d accidentally fallen through the Rift and managed to cross dimensions. That was the only explanation, it was—It was just a fantasy, and she knew it._

_Just across the street, there was a man she would know anywhere, any_ where.

No, _said something inside her,_ that’s not him. That’s not my Doctor.

_Her eyes weren’t lying to her, but her heart knew better, and as she looked again, she knew it was true. That man was not the Doctor, but he looked very much like him. Almost exactly like him, actually, and Rose remembered that almost everyone had a double in the universe—Pete and Jackie, Rickey and his grandmother. Rose didn’t, and because he wasn’t human, she’d assumed the Doctor didn’t either._

_She was wrong, apparently._

_This wasn’t her Doctor, the differences were clear. This man’s hair was a washed out, floppy mess; the Doctor was almost obsessive about his hair, vain bloke. Ginger, not ginger—just sort of brown. This man was pale, as if he rarely went outside, and thin enough that his clothes hung off him. Rose wondered if he was eating enough, and then groaned; she was sounding like her mum._

_She turned away and started walking again, picking up pace until she was sprinting._ Faster, faster, _she felt more than thought; her legs and chest burned from the exertion, but she didn’t slow down. She had to get away from the man who looked like the Doctor._

_Before she decided that she didn’t care._

A million “what-if’s” run through her mind when she sees him, questions that have haunted her since before she left Broadchurch last time.

What if he’s in a relationship? What if he was _always_ in a relationship and he just didn’t tell her? It wasn’t like they’d been dating at _any_ point in their strange arrangement.

What if he’s forgotten her? Or worse, what if he doesn’t want to see her? What if he hates her?

She doesn’t know what would be worse. Mostly, because she won’t blame him one bit if he _does_ hate her. She deserves it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry I was late posting this! Sunday was hectic.


	4. Rose Tyler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a certain grouchy DI and a certain blonde time traveler are reunited

Scowling and drenched, DI Hardy stalks up to the crime scene’s supervisor and points at the large, unfamiliar vehicle blocking the entrance.

“What,” he snarls, “is _that_ doing in my way?”

The supervising officer—having come to associate DI Hardarse with headaches and paperwork—is uncharacteristically thrilled to have the detective on scene.

“Dunno, sir,” says the officer, relieved. “Pulled up just after we arrived, and flashed their IDs. I had to let ‘em in, they have clearance.”

The vehicle is huge and bulky, a state-of-the-art 4x4 with blacked out windows and no plates. Hardy doesn’t have any problems imagining it as a tactical assault vehicle on some battlefield. That nice mental image does not help his already rotten temper any more than a good poke in the eye with a stick would. If anything, it reminds him that he got very little sleep, he _still_ doesn’t drink coffee, the police are understaffed and overworked, and he’s just been handed a new case on top of his others.

Oh, and it’s exactly a year to the day when Rose Tyler had gone missing.

No, Alec Hardy is not in a good mood. In fact, he’s in a very foul mood, and pity anyone who even comes across the wrong way.

There is an ongoing pool among the force, betting on how long it is before he shoots someone (someone who isn’t a criminal and is in definite and unquestionable deserving of being shooting). The money is up to a good seventy quid.

Now, he arrives on his much unwanted crime scene to find…this. Pity the owners of the black 4x4.

“What kind of clearance?” Hardy rubs his temples and prays that whoever caused this mess has a very, _very_ good reason.

“Umm…” The officer wrings his hands and steps back to what he thinks is out of strangling range; he obviously underestimated how quickly a sick-looking man like Hardy can _move._ “Special Ops, sir. It didn’t actually say…just out of my jurisdiction…sir.”

Ellie almost didn’t believe it, because she’d thought it only happened in books and movies, but yes. She can actually see a vein pulsing in Hardy’s forehead. _Oh, bollocks._ This can’t possibly end well.

“Then _why_ on God’s Earth would you _let. them. through?!”_ Hardy snarls, eye twitching.

It has been a very long day, and he just wants to go home, have a drink, and nurse a broken heart he hadn’t realized he had until after his lady love was already gone.

The supervisor looks sheepish and wary, and very much like he would like nothing more than to bolt like a rabbit to a safe distance. Ellie feels bad for the poor bloke; she of all people knows how nasty Hardy can get when he’s in a proper, rotten sulk.

It doesn’t escape her _why_ this day is particularly sensitive—it’s touchy for her too, she liked Rose—but he doesn’t need to take it out on everyone and their mother.

Ellie decides to intervene before there’s more than one homicide victim on the beach.

“Alright,” she says, stepping between them; well, really, she’s shielding the poor officer from the wrath of a thoroughly brassed off Detective Inspector. “Calm down, sir. Let’s find out who these people are _before_ you decide to go in ready for war.”

For a moment, she thinks Hardy is going to strangle _her_ instead, but then he backs down and turns away, stalking in the direction of the big CS tent. He mutters angrily to himself about incompetence and interlopers, and on this day _of all days._ He couldn’t have mourned for Rose in peace, no, because

The crime scene team have been kept behind the tape, but Alec can pick out people moving in, out, and around the tent. From a distance, he can’t make out anything more specific than black figures, but as he gets closer, he can make out specifics. The “special ops” aren’t wearing any identifying insignias or patches, but most of them have firearms strapped to their backs or hanging at their hips—some kind of futuristic, sci-fi-looking guns that Alec have never seen before—and carrying around GPS’s like cell phones.

Alec thinks he sees a familiar face—the spiked blond friend of Rose’s, Alec hasn’t seen him in months, ever since he gave him the letter—come out of the tent, but the closer he gets, the figure blurs and disappears, and Alec wonders if he ever saw it at all.

Bloody hell, it’s just like the first couple of months with Rose.

And isn’t that a scary thought?

It’s also a thought that he doesn’t let himself dwell on long, because it’s associated with blonde hair and wide smiles, and chips and rain. Rose isn’t coming back, he accepted that months ago. If he lets himself think that she’s waiting around the corner with a smile and a hug, then it will just be that much harder when he finds empty air and silence instead.

He pushes past a few of the Special Ops when they try to stop him, and after knocking one straight back onto his arse, they just stand by and watch. Ellie trails behind him, handing out second-hand apologies like candy. He gets the feeling that there’s some kind of unspoken conversation passing through the air, secrets he isn’t privy to. It’s a familiar feeling, and as usual, that silent discussion is about him.

He bursts into the tent, ready to snap the head off of anyone interfering with his investigation. The body had been covered with a sheet, but now it’s been pulled back and there’s a woman crouching next to it. Unlike the Special Ops guys, this woman’s wearing civvies—probably a desk jockey called into the field, with short blonde hair.

And she has her hands all over his vic.

He drops a hand on the woman’s shoulder and pulls her back roughly, saying, “Miss, what do you think you’re—”

His voice disappears mid-sentence when he sees her face—wide-eyed, pale, and mouth hanging open, full of shock and disbelief. He imagines that he’s not looking too different at the moment.

Finally, he found his voice again, only to choke out one, four-lettered word:

“…Rose?”


	5. Dinner for Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose and the good DI Hardy finally go on that dinner date

Well. This was incredibly awkward.

Alec watches Rose as she worries her lip with her teeth and continues to poke at her salad; she hasn’t taken more than one or two bites since she got it. Though, that might have more to do with Jake doing a not-so-subtle shadowing routine at a nearby table than an actual lack of appetite. She’s much paler than he remembers, thinner, and the bones in her face are more prominent. She’s cut her hair into short layers that flutter when she moves her head too quickly; he isn’t sure whether he likes it or not, but then decides that it’s her decision and he shouldn’t judge.

Truth be told, he is still in shock. He should have known, he realizes, when he saw the crime scene crawling in those Special Ops guys—Torchwood, as he finds out, but how was he supposed to know? He never actually met them face to face, she was always his connection.

He never expected for Rose to come back. Deep in his heart, he had long accepted that she was gone. Now, facing her at a table, he still feels like he’s going to wake up any minute and realize that this is all in his head. The worst part is, he isn’t sure if it’s a nightmare or a hopeful dream, or which would be better.

Finally, he clears his throat and puts his cutlery down with a final sounding clink.

“We need to talk.”              

Rose smiles tightly, but not unpleasantly.

“I think that’s been established, Detective Inspector.”

So, she’s back to calling him _Detective Inspector?_ She only ever did that when she was joking or…or when something unspeakably bad was about to happen.

She shakes her head.

“No, ‘m sorry, Alec, that’s not fair. It’s not you, I’ve just had a…tough couple of months. Actually,” she admits, “it’s been a tough couple of years.”

He waits for her to start talking, and after a moment, she does.

Rose tells him about the dimensional cannon and the darkness from the beyond, which turned out to be a whole shitload of Daleks who somehow managed to find religion (apparently a bad thing). She tells him about Martha and Mickey—“he decided to stay behind in that dimension”—and the DoctorDonna—“A temp from Cheswick who thought she was useless—the most important woman in the universe!” There was Sarah Jane, who apparently has a son now, and Captain Jack’s team in _Cardiff,_ of all places! “It’s like Broadchurch, ‘cept their Rift’s much bigger and badder.”

He doesn’t understand most of what she’s talking about, but he likes to listen. He likes to watch as her face lights up in that most amazing way when she talks about her old friends. He wishes he could make her glow like that; she’s perfect when she smiles. Well, she’s always perfect, but particularly when she smiles.

Alec catches Jake glaring at him over Rose’s shoulder, and she proves too involved in her story to notice Alec send a dirty look right back. Alec can completely appreciate the bloke’s overprotectiveness towards Rose—it isn’t like the DI is completely innocent of that particular crime, either—but for God’s sake, it isn’t like Alec is going to ax murder her! He—cares for her, after all. _And,_ he’s a policeman.

Then it’s her turn to listen and his turn to talk.

He tells her about his cases and Ellie’s kids, and how the town hasn’t been the same. For God’s sake, he thought she was dead! Having Jake deliver that letter was completely unfair, to all of them.

She coughs into her hand, smiles apologetically, and then coughs again, harder this time. She brings her purse up onto her lap and pulls out a small pill case, and taps out a capsule onto her hand. She swallows it with a sip of water; she opted out of wine, even though she used to happily share a glass with him.

“What is that for?” he asks, curious. He doesn’t remember her taking pills before.

She gives him a crooked smile.

“Vitamin,” she says, and he doesn’t believe that at all.

But, he respects her choice to lie and lets it pass, because if she’s lying to him, he has to believe that she has a good reason. If something was truly wrong, she would tell him; she wouldn’t keep something like that from him, not after knowing what he went through with his heart.

The rest of dinner goes reasonably well, all things considered. At least she isn’t lying about anything important. That’s the easy part, Alec decides, as he pays for dinner. She isn’t lying about her job—he knows she’s a government operative who works with aliens and dangerous creatures, and that she’s a time traveling shopgirl from another dimension—which is something he can’t say he’s _never_ done. She’s told him things so crazy and impossible that they couldn’t possibly be lies.

Why was she lying?

They go for a walk afterwards, down to the pier for a 99. He remembers how she used to take a huge chomp out of her cone and get it all over her nose; she’d laugh and tease him about licking it off, and then swipe a napkin over it. Now, she licks it halfheartedly, staring out at the ocean with a faraway look on her face.

“Are you alright?” he asks, even though he knows she isn’t.

She jumps, dropping her cone; it splatters on her shoes. She stares down at it, and laughs nervously. “Sorry!”

He mutters something about it being no big deal, he’ll get another one, and leaves her standing on the pier. The entire time he’s getting a new 99 from the cart, he’s thinking about the look on her face when he spoke up. She forgot that he was with her. What is going on in her head?

He turns, 99 in hand, and freezes, eyes locked on Rose, where she lay unmoving on the pier.

“ROSE!”


	6. Something in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's something in the dark.
> 
> And it's coming for her.

_She’s running._

_Where? No idea. No thoughts except, RUN, and it’s not just her thinking it, she can_ hear _it. Someone’s shouting it. A man—he’s familiar, who is he? She doesn’t know him, she_ knows _him. He’s. He’s. She can’t remember, it’s been so long, she doesn’t remember._

_Run._

_RUN_

_“Run for your life.”_

_It was an awful lot of running, and she was tired, so tired, can’t she just stop for a moment and sleep? Her step falters._

_“Run for your life.”_

_It’s a man, and a woman, both_ so _old, and thousands of voices she knows but doesn’t know. There is an overwhelming feeling that she doesn’t understand, because it’s ancient and alien—also familiar, why can’t she remember where she felt it before?—and she doesn’t know who they are, but she listens._

_She keeps running._

_It’s dark and damp, and she can’t see a_ thing _, not even the path. She can feel it underneath her shoes, solid and hard. The air around her—is it even air? It’s thick and humid, and tastes like…bananas? in her mouth. She’s moving through a thick, impenetrable black fog, it’s pressing back on her._

_It’s_ alive. _The darkness is fucking alive. That doesn’t bother her as much as she knows it should. It isn’t even really a surprise, for some reason. Somehow, she already knew._

_A deep growl reverberates through the dark, straight into her bones and soul. It’s deep and ancient, and older than anything she’s ever encountered. Older than Him. Older than Her. It frightens her. And then she knows:_

_There’s something in the dark._

_And it’s coming for her._


	7. Dying Flowers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Alec waits and gets nosy

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The air is cold and eerily still, and smells of antiseptic and death. The walls are faded, streaked where they’ve been cleaned with too-strong bleach; ditto on the floor. There’s plenty of room to move around, nowhere to get comfortable. But, then, comfort isn’t necessarily needed in a place like this. Every room in the hospital looks the same, and he knows, because he’s spent enough of his time here, before and after the surgery.

He sits at her bedside and holds her hand, and he waits.

It’s been two hours since Rose collapsed on the pier and Alec called an ambulance. The medics made him drive separately, and meet them at the hospital. Then they wouldn’t tell him anything except, “She’s being taken care of,” no matter how much of a fuss he made. Eventually, they threatened to call the police, at which point he promptly exploded that he _was_ the bloody police, and Rose was his CI, so they’d better goddamn let him see her.

They called the station anyway.

It was at that point that Jake chose to make his appearance by punching Alec soundly in the face and knocking him on his arse, and then promptly demanded Rose’s information.

The hospital gave it over without so much as a signature.

Bloody Torchwood.

Alec rips his eyes away from Rose’s face to glance over at Jake. The blond man is leaning against the door, acting as a guard against who knows what, and chattering urgently into his earpiece. Strangest Bluetooth Alec’s ever seen. He’s not sure how to feel about Jake Simmonds, twenty-six, Scottish, married, no computer records _at all._ The man is rough around the edges and always on guard, eyes constantly moving as if to keep track of escape routes and potential dangers. He carries himself like a soldier who has seen too much combat—Alec recognizes that look—but there is no record of any _Jake Simmonds_ in the last fifty years serving in the military or police.

But, he clearly cares for Rose.

It’s for that reason that Alec is doing his very best to ignore the distinctive bulge of a handgun under Jake’s jacket.

Alec goes back to watching Rose.

He doesn’t remember ever being this scared in his life. He isn’t just scared; he’s _terrified._ He’s feeling something beyond fear, and it isn’t even for him. He’s terrified for her. His heart hurts, beating like a jackhammer in his chest, and somewhere inside him, he distantly knows that he should probably be worried about another attack. It wouldn’t do to have them both in the hospital.

The much larger part of him doesn’t care. All he cares about is Rose.

Whenever he gets up or moves around, he finds that he can’t stop shaking. Over and over, he goes over the scenario in his head, and he knows that there was nothing he could have done. That doesn’t make him feel any better. He knows what life without Rose is like—the year she vanished off the face of the Earth, and every year before she walked into his life—but he never wants to experience it again.

He knows it might be inevitable.

While he was waiting for the ambulance, he is ashamed to admit that he looked through her purse. Not to invade her privacy, of course, but to maybe find a clue. And good Lord, did he find something.

A wallet with her ID and cards, including money of a currency he’d never seen before. A piece of blank paper in a leather slip. Photos.

Sitting at her side, he imagines that he can feel the weight of that photo in his pocket. He feels guilty that he nicked it, but he needed to know.

It was a photo—well-loved, corners belt and worn soft, folded many times—of two people standing in front of a blue police box, the kind Alec hasn’t seen since he was a little boy. One of the people was Rose—younger, brighter smile, but still Rose—in a pink jacket and battered sneakers. The other person was a man, tall and skinny in a brown suit and trench coat, and red Converse. His hair was wild, but in a carefully styled way. Both of them were grinning like mad, arms linked and body language clearly telling that they were much more than friends.

The man in the photo is him.

Alec doesn’t know why this surprises him, because Rose told him at the beginning that the Doctor could’ve been his twin.

But, he hadn’t really believed it until now. Rose hadn’t been exaggerating, Alec and the man in the photo—the Doctor, her Doctor—are identical, except for a few minor differences in style. Identical where it counts. He idly wonders if they’re identical _everywhere,_ and then immediately decides that if he’s feeling jealous that an ancient time traveling alien might be better endowed, he’s worrying too much.

The photo wasn’t all he found in her purse.

He also found a notepad with a list of medications scribbled on it—a lot of medications. He scanned them and recognized some of them.

Antidepressants. Iron supplements. Painkillers. Stimulants. Ibuprofen. An anticoagulant that he himself had taken for his heart.

Rose is sick.

More than that, Rose is dying.


	8. Hospital Worries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the truth gets uncomfortably close

_“What happened?”_

She hears voices.

_“She just collapsed, Miller. I didn’t even see it. I turned around and…”_

They’re familiar—the voices, not the people. She doesn’t know them.

_“Do they know why?”_

_“They won’t tell me anything……I’m not family.”_

Maybe he’s not family, but he’s with her when she wakes up.

Waking up is hard, like being born and dying at the same time. Every sensation hits her at the same time, pouring into her senses until they burn with fire. Antiseptic and bleach so strong, bile rises in her throat. Tears leak down the sides of her face when she opens her eyes and then snaps them back closed again. She groans and tries to lift her hands to wipe the tears away; she can’t. Something is holding her arms down. She starts to thrash, frantically pulling against her restraints. Her limbs feel heavy, but not numb.

Her fingers scrabble against the sheets, throat convulsing in an effort to push back the tube. Where is she? It takes her several seconds to process what her mind is telling her, for her heart to compute and process and stop screaming _something has me_. Against every instinct, she consciously makes the decision to breathe in and out, shaky and fast, through her nose, again and again until it’s slow and steady.

Something brushes against her face, and she opens her eyes to see someone staring down at her. _Alec._ He looks paler than usual, eyes bloodshot and scruff longer. One side of his face was turning black and blue, which Rose is pretty sure isn’t her fault.

He’s worried.

Through the medication-fueled haze, Rose feels pangs of guilt and regret. She’s never wanted to make him worry.

“Hey,” he says, “welcome back.”

Two years ago when they first met, when Alec was just DI Grumpy, having stumbled onto something far beyond his means and measure, she didn’t think she would fall so far. She’d known that he would be a big part of her life, but after the Doctor, she’d thought it impossible to fall in love again.

Alec is proof that she was very wrong.

She’s glad.

She feels a weight on her hand, and she glances down to watch Alec brushing his thumb across her knuckles. She turns her hand over and catches his, squeezing gently. She wants to say ‘hey’ back, but that’s rather hard with the tube down her throat. She’s really glad she learned how to breathe through her nose when she traveled with the Doctor, or she would have been choking.

She spots Jake hovering behind Alec and she wants to smile, but she can’t. She tries to make her questions apparent in her eyes. She doesn’t remember what happened, but she can imagine. She feels horrible for hurting Alec that way, but she also knows that at least half the crappy feeling is the reason she’s in the hospital.

“You started thrashing, Rose,” Jake explains. _The restraints._ “Something had to be done, or you’d tear the IVs out.”

Rose has spent so much time under the care of medical professionals as of late that needles, tubes, and IVs no longer bother her. Once upon a time, the thought of a hospital visit would have made her skin crawl. Now, it’s just another part of life. Alec stays with her when Jake goes to get the doctor—not a Torchwood facility, interesting. That means Alec found her and brought her to the hospital, not Jake; Jake would have taken her to Torchwood, specialists who still have no idea what’s wrong with her. It doesn’t matter under whose care she is, because it won’t make a difference.

Alec tells her that she fainted when he went to get her another ice cream; he left for less than five minutes, and she was down. He called an ambulance, nearly got arrested by his own division, and received a black eye courtesy of Jake. Rose makes a mental note to speak to her quasi-brother about that.

Hitting her dates is not an appropriate outlet for his nervous energy.

 _Date._ Alec was her date tonight. She wants to smile. That just sounds…right.

She tries to hold as still as possible while the doctor checks her over, and ultimately, decides to remove the tube. She’s grateful. She swallows and grimaces; her throat is painfully parched after having a plastic snake down it. Jake offers her a cup of water, which she accepts with a smile and downs quickly. It burns. She chokes and glares at him over the cup.

“Bastard,” she rasps.

He shrugs and grins, because he knows that if she’s cracking jokes, she isn’t dead quite yet. He squeezes her shoulder gently before taking the cup and retreating. He motions to the door and taps his earpod.

“I’ll be just in the hall,” he says. “Got a few calls to make.”

Rose winces; she has a good idea exactly who is going to be on the receiving end of those calls. She almost wishes she had stayed unconscious. Her mother and stepfather don’t need any more reasons to worry.

She watches Jake go, both thankful for the private time and resentful, because now, she has to answer questions.

God, Rose hates questions.


	9. Interrogations of the Invalids

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which questions are asked and answers are given

When the door closes behind Jake, Alec waits about five seconds.

Then the questions start.

“You’re dying.”

Okay, so, not so much a question as a statement.

She nods, because it isn’t worth lying about. He deserves the truth; she should have told him the truth from the start.

“Yes, I am.”

He looks sad, but not surprised. She spots her pill box on the counter, and isn’t sure whether she should feel annoyed he went through her purse, or sad that he found out that way. He should have heard it from her first.

She struggles to sit up without pulling out the IVs, and catches sight of her reflection in the window. She winces. Why couldn’t she be one of those women on TV who wake up with perfect hair? Alec leans back into the chair; Rose knows how much it means that he is trying to look relaxed. He has a habit of sitting on the edge of his chairs, looking perpetually like he’s going to jump up and chase a lead.

The detective thing is really kind of sexy— _very_ sexy, actually, except she isn’t overly fond of the getting shot at part. She knows how it feels to get shot, she’s seen friends and soldiers get shot. It’s never pleasant, and she’d rather Alec not put himself in danger constantly.

And that makes her a liar and a hypocrite.

He takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. It actually makes it look _less_ messy, which is a considerable accomplishment.

“What is it?” he finally asks. He sounds drained, and she remembers that no too long ago, Alec was also dying. She holds out her hand and he slips his into it. She holds it tight, like a lifeline.

“We don’t know,” she admits. “The Torchwood doctors have run every test they have, and all they’ve come up with is some kind of radiation poisoning. They can’t do anything except try and slow it down.”

He nods.

“The pills in your purse…”

She shakes her head, and immediately regrets it when the headache flares up. She winces and raises a hand to her temple. As the weeks of living death drag on, the headaches are getting progressively worse, and she’s yet to find a painkiller that takes care of them. Sometimes, it feels like she’s burning up from the inside out.

“Nope,” she says. “Most of those are placebos—sugar pills. The doctors think I don’t know, but I overheard them. They’re hoping if I think the meds are working, they will.”

Rose gets very quiet, studying a bleach spot on the wall. She accepted she’s dying long ago, but it doesn’t get any easier to discuss. Jake avoids the topic like it’s the bubonic plague, and that works for them just fine. But, Alec…she needs to talk about this with Alec.

“It started right after I came back from the Other Side,” she explains, breath shuddering in her ribcage, “when I was numb inside. I couldn’t feel anything—for a long time. Sometimes I wish it stayed that way. Then it started—hot flashes, headaches, everything hurt. All day, every day, I feel like someone’s watching me. Even when I’m sleeping, I know there’s something in my dreams, waiting.”

She swallows, her eyes burning as she becomes extremely aware of the tingling sensation on the back of her neck.

“It got worse and worse. I wasn’t eating, the mother of all headaches had taken up inside my skull, and I couldn’t get any sleep because I only got terrible nightmares. Finally, I fainted in the middle of a presentation, and I woke up in the infirmary. The medical team at Torchwood Main checked me out in every way possible—including some ways I didn’t know, and I wish I didn’t know, were possible. Everyone was so good to me, but I couldn’t handle the pity, and I needed to see you again before…” she trails off.

She pulls her hand away and crosses her arms over her chest, folding in on herself. Alec clicks his tongue and shifts from the edge of the chair to the edge of the bed. Rose smiles at him, grateful for the company.

“Alec…I’m scared,” she admits. She doesn’t like to think of how much pride she has to swallow to say the truth out loud. For the longest time, she couldn’t be scared. She had to be strong for everyone, so that _they_ could be scared. Now, she’s not fighting for anyone but herself, and that terrified her.

Alec pats her leg awkwardly, looking rather like a deer in the middle of the road, staring down death’s headlights.

“I…that’s understandable,” he says. It would be a sad excuse for a reassurance, but Alec knows how she feels, to a certain extent. Not too long ago, he was dying, too.

The irony in all of this is not lost on her, thanks.

“Thanks, Alec.” She smiles and wishes he were close enough to kiss his cheek. “You’re sweet.”

He looks ruffled, like she’s speaking a foreign language, and she resists the urge to giggle; it would probably hurt. Where was the TARDIS universal translator when you needed it?

“I can honestly say no one’s ever called me ‘sweet’ before,” he half-grumbles.

This time, she does laugh, and yes, it hurts her throat, but it also feels good. She can’t remember the last time she laughed honestly. He smiles at her, and as she smiles back, she knows that everything’s going to be alright. For a while, anyway, and a while is better than never at all.

Alec shifts closer, his hand on her neck, and—

“So,” Jake says as he walks back in, hand over his eyes, “I really hope you guys aren’t snogging yet, because I just got off the phone with Gemini, and the nurse out there was givin’ me the evil eye.”

He drops his hand and looks sheepish. Rose scowls at him; if looks could kill… Her headache spikes abruptly and unexpectedly.

 _Damn you, Jake Simmonds. I swear, you’re a worse cockblocker than Mum, you are. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’re doin’ it on purpo—oh, you_ bastard _._

And then, something incredible happens. As if he can read her mind, hear her thoughts, Jake grins.

For the first time in a long time, everything feels okay. Not great, but okay. And sometimes, okay is the best you can hope for.


	10. What Hurts The Most

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose confronts her future, or lack thereof

The doctors agree to release Rose if she stays with someone she doesn’t see in the mirror every morning.

Naturally, Jake volunteers to stick with her, and she loves him for that. But, he has a life of his own, and she doesn’t want to impede on that; his husband can’t be very pleased that Jake is spending all his time with a pretty girl, even if she is dying, thinks of him as a big brother, and in love with someone else.

She turns him down, and orders him to get back to base.

Alec watches Jake slink off, and then quietly extends to her an offer to stay with him.

Her mouth falls open as the offer sinks in, and she thinks about it for all of five seconds before blurting, “Yes! Thank you, that’s so sweet.”

He turns red—she remembers what he said about no one ever calling him ‘sweet’ before, and she can’t imagine why not, because he is, and he looks adorable when he blushes like _that_ —and stands up, hastily wiping his hands on his pants.

“Yes, well,” he says, sliding from Alec Hardy back into Detective Grumpy Hardarse, “it’s no problem. I’ll be at work mostly, so you won’t be in the way.”

Rose sighs the sigh of the long-suffering, and lets the doctors look over her one more time before they sign her release forms. So much for progress, she thinks as she gingerly pulls on some clothes; gingerly, because she’s actually very sore from losing consciousness and banging her head and every other bone in her body on the pier. But, that’s alright, because she’s dealt with awkward—Mickey, cough—, emotionally distant—Doctor, cough—, and damaged—Jack, cough—men before. She can do it again. Mentally, she makes a vow as Alec leads her out of the hospital and into his car; she walks a few steps behind just so she can watch _his_ behind. Oh yeah, _that’s_ one for the Bucket List.

Upon her honor as the Doctor’s companion, she _will_ get Alec Hardy—head Detective Inspector of Broadchurch, renowned for being grumpy and socially retarded—into bed.

And she’s suddenly very glad that Alec isn’t a mind reader. God, that would be embarrassing. On the other hand, she muses, maybe it would help skip the round-about they’ve been doing and go straight to the shagging. Sometimes she wishes she could’ve done that with the Doctor. Now it’s too late. She doesn’t want it to be too late with Alec.

She cranks up the heater in the back of Alec’s police-issue vehicle and curls up, staring out the window at the town as it passes.

Rose grew up in London, lived her whole life out of that little flat on the Powell Estate, and she loved it. She still does—her London most of all, but she’s come to…appreciate Pete’s London and all its differences. She loves the fast pace of a city, overcrowded, brimming over with every sort of person imaginable. When she was first assigned to Broadchurch, Rose had been absolutely certain that she would hate it. A lifetime of the big city and the bigger universe, and she couldn’t imagine a life in a small town; it seemed to her the closest thing to hell on Earth for someone like her.

Now, she can imagine it.

She watches the village go by them, sees the people walking down the streets, so friendly with everyone else. No fights breaking out over stupid stuff, no muggings, no asshole smoking on the corner, no hobos hogging the benches. People are nice, and they care about each other; everyone knows everyone else. She thought it would bug her, but it doesn’t. She likes how pleasant it is, and the low murder rate is a dream.

Rose can imagine having a life here. She could get a house, or a flat, probably, and go to work every day. She could get a dog—she’s always loved dogs, their love is unconditional—and take it for runs every morning down at the beach. She could imagine a future—marrying a good man, taking a position as a secretary or analyst, having children.

She will never have children.

A tiny sob builds up in her throat and she clamps her hand over her mouth to muffle it. She doesn’t want Alec to hear, he would only worry, and his heart doesn’t need that right now.

She will never have children. She’s known that for a long time, but never before has it seemed so…real. When she was with Mickey, they were children themselves; _having_ children had seemed so far off, it wasn’t even a thought. When she was with the Doctor, and she imagined that she could have a life with him as more than his companion, she’d resigned herself to never being a mother. The Doctor and her—they were different species, and she’d taken enough biology classes in school to know that different species couldn’t reproduce. She would never have his children. And she was alright with that, as long as she had him.

But Alec…

She wipes away tears with the back of her hand. Even if she wants to have children with Alec, she can’t. She wouldn’t live long enough for it to be a viable option.

Somehow, that hurts more than she thought possible.


	11. A House is Not a Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose acquaints herself with her new residence

Alec shows Rose her room and then he has to go to work.

There’s a new case for the Broadchurch police—not homicide, thank God—and they need Alec to pick up some slack. Rose watches him leave from her window, standing there until she can’t see his car anymore. Then she decides to look around his home. She has a feeling that this will be the last house she’ll stay in before she shuffles off the mortal coil, and she should at least get the chance to see DI Hardarse’s inner sanctum first.

She giggles into her hand, and feels younger than she has in years.

Rose walks around his house in fuzzy socks, a too-big shirt that once belonged to Jake, and these truly obnoxious flannel pants that blind small children and old people, a blanket clutched around her shoulders like a cape. It’s a small house, but has plenty of room for a single man like Alec. There aren’t a lot of personal effects, which isn’t surprising considering how much of a workaholic he is, It’s obvious that Alec doesn’t spend a lot of time at home, because everything is very neat and there’s a fine layer of dust over the house.

But, there are some clues that a human being really lives here. Medicine in the cabinet, a toothbrush next to the sink, a towel thrown over the shower door. A jacket thrown over a chair, a coffee mug forgotten on the table, dirty dishes in the sink. A PC that’s older than Rose. She skims her hand over his bookshelf, reading the titles; it was mostly historical fiction, the kind of boring stuff that Jack would read aloud to help Rose sleep.

There’s a photo on the coffee table. It’s a young girl kneeling in front of a Christmas tree. She’s pretty, and she has Alec’s eyes, only happy and less mopey. Rose figures that she’s his daughter, the one he doesn’t talk about. She carefully sets the picture back.

She peeks inside the fridge, curious as to what kind of food her detective likes; maybe she can cook for him sometime, to say “thank you” for everything. There are some vegetables and a half-empty carton of milk, and a large collection of various take-out and leftover containers. She cracks the lid on one of them and wrinkles her nose. Yuck. She dumps it in the trash, and proceeds to go through the rest of his food, throwing out anything that’s expired, smells like Tony’s socks, and/or is supporting new life. Then she makes a shopping list that includes the Five Basic Food Groups According to Rose: fruit, soup, Jammie Dodgers, coffee, and chips.

She pins it to the fridge door with a Big Ben magnet and goes off to continue exploring.

Eventually, she runs out of rooms, and decides to start over. Only, this time, she does the tour with her new best friends: Dust Rag and Spray Bottle. She doesn’t know much about living with a terminal illness—mostly because she politely refused every pamphlet and booklet pushed at her by counselors, doctors, parents, and Jake—but she doubts that living in a house blanketed by dust would be good for her.

Slowly and surely, she makes her way through the house, attacking the dust mites with a fervor she hasn’t known for months. She goes every other inch she can, sitting down for a break whenever she gets dizzy or feels sick.

Feels sick. Ha. It’s funny—not funny ha-ha, but funny in an ironic way—that she’s sick all the time, but she doesn’t feel it. Usually, she feels normal. Now it’s funny ha-ha, because she hasn’t been normal for a long time.

She hits the jackpot when she’s cleaning Alec’s workspace: A stack of paperback books in a desk drawer, shoved to the back behind files and office supplies.

She doesn’t believe it. She claps her hands in childish glee, because who would have guessed it?

Alec is a closet trashy-romance-novel fan.

She grabs one off the top of the stack and curls up in the big chair in the living room. She knows this book, her mum read it. She laughs again. Oh, this is brilliant. With her hot cocoa on the side table and her feet tucked up under her, Rose starts reading.


	12. Beginning of the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hardy has a small panic attack

It’s late when Hardy pulls into the driveway and shuts down the car.

He has take-out from their favorite restaurant sitting on the passenger’s seat, the tail end of the sunset in his rearview mirror, and a beautiful woman waiting inside; some combination of those three keeps him from thinking about the newest case. It’s a domestic violence thing, which wouldn’t bug him except the woman in the A&E looks remarkable like Rose, and against his better judgment, Hardy has managed to fall quite under the Londoner’s slightly manic spell.

He grumbles to himself as he struggles to unlock the door, juggling dinner and his briefcase in his arms. Finally, he manages to get the door unlocked without spilling Chinese food all over the front step.

“Rose, I’m back,” he calls as he locks the door behind him, and then slides the deadbolt into place.

She hasn’t replied by the time he sets the food on the kitchen counter, and if she were anyone else, Hardy wouldn’t have worried. Except Rose is _Rose_ , and if the last twenty-four hours has taught him anything, it’s that Rose is liable to drop unconscious—or even dead—at any moment.

Silence is not a good thing.

“Rose?” he tries again, and again, there is no response except the uncomfortable stillness permeating his—their?—house. That does not bode well.

With each room he checks in vain hope to find his new housemate alright, his panic level rises, until he finds himself seriously considering calling Miller for back-up. He does notice, however, that his house is conspicuously cleaner than when he left; Rose has been busy.

Finally, he reaches what has become his office, and he lets out a breath so fast and so deep that he has to grab the doorjamb to keep himself from dropping. He clutches his shoulder—this girl, this _woman_ is going to give him a heart attack—and allows himself a small smile. _Bloody woman._

Rose is curled up in his old, beaten-up, leather club chair, the same one he’s had since uni because he can’t bring himself to throw it out. Her feet are tucked under her legs, her arms folded on the armrest, and her head on her hands; eyes closed, mouth slightly open. If Hardy couldn’t see the steady rise and fall of her body, he would have thought her dead.

_Thank God._

He hadn’t realized how scared he’d been that she’d dropped dead during his absence until now. It’s good to see her looking so comfortable, especially in a place where Hardy himself has never been totally at ease. He wants her to be happy for as long as she has left, be it years, months…days.

He remembers what it’s like to live life knowing that any moment you could drop dead—or as good as. He wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and the last person who should know the feeling is Rose.

She’s a good person, despite her own doubts about herself. She’s young and beautiful, and she should be out enjoying life instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop. Hardy knows how much she loved her job at Torchwood; he wishes that she could just walk right back into it. She deserves to be happy.

Not this.

As quietly as he can, Hardy crosses the room and carefully extracts a half-open book from her hands. He sets it on his desk and then, as gently as possible, shakes Rose’s shoulder. She mumbles and curls in tighter, burying her nose in her arms. Hardy clicks his tongue and shakes her a little firmer. He hates to wake her, but she needs to eat.

“Rose? C’mon, Rose, up you get.”

She groans and he knows that she’s awake.

“You have to eat something. Then you can go back to sleep,” he says.

She frowns, but pulls herself upright. “Whatchu get for dinner?”

He doesn’t comment on her slurred words or dilated eyes, or the bright red imprint of her shirt sleeve across her face. He helps her stand, sliding an arm around her waist for support, and together, they start walking back to the kitchen.

“Chinese, from the—”

“Place on Main,” she finishes, grinning. “Fantastic!”

She smiles as if to a private joke, one that she doesn’t want to explain. He’s alright with that, because he’s got an understanding of Rose Tyler: She doesn’t ask about Danny or Sandbrook, he doesn’t ask about the Doctor or Torchwood. When she wants her most precious memories with him, she will of her own free will. Pestering her won’t do a bit of good, and might actually do her harm. So, he leaves her be with her fantastic’s and brilliant’s and allons-y’s.

They forgo the table in favor of eating on the couch, Rose laughing at a cheesy TV drama and waving her chopsticks in the air, Alec too preoccupied with watching her to pay any attention to the show. She’s so beautiful when she laughs, the way she lights up. Alec privately muses that if someone could find a way to bottle her laughter, they’d make a fortune.

Rose catches him looking at her, and though he freezes, unsure of how to proceed, she smiles. She thinks about everything that’s gone wrong in her life, and then she thinks about the one good thing.

_Bugger this._

She sends a quick mental apology to the Doctor, and then grabs Alec’s collar and pulls him down into a long-overdue kiss.

It is the first of many nights just like this one.

 


	13. Domestic Bliss with a Time Limit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the clock is ticking for Rose and Hardy

For the next two months, life is—well, not good, all things considered, but good enough.

Rose keeps working with Torchwood as a consultant—“No foot work,” Jake declares with no room for change—and enters case data into the police’s computer systems part-time. Alec was…reluctant at first when Rose mentioned it, but she was desperate to do _something._ Now he just grumbles quietly to himself into his tea and she pretends she doesn’t care. She’s glad to get out of the house, and really, the data entry isn’t that much different than some of the work she did at Torchwood.

Alec spends most of his time responding to disturbance calls and petty shoplifting; Broadchurch has been quiet on the murder and mayhem front lately. Not that he’s complaining, of course, because the distinct lack of bloody corpses gives him more time with Rose.

Heaven knows time’s something that’s running short.

Knowing that they don’t have a lifetime to figure each other out, they don’t take the time they have left for granted. They eat each meal together, go for walks, and make out like horny teenagers on the couch. Alec won’t do anything more strenuous—not that Rose doesn’t do her damnedest to change his mind, or… _other_ influential organs—because he’s just too scared that one of them will have a heart attack in the middle, and nothing kills the mood like cardiac arrest.

They’re dealing, pretty well actually, until the bodies start showing up.

Pretty damn grisly, too, worse than anything Alec had ever seen before.

Not Rose. She sees the pictures, and she doesn’t flinch, wince, or look away. All the planets, moons, and galaxies she’s been too, all of time and space where she had set foot, and she’s seen worse. She doesn’t feel sick, looking at the bodies, the broken, bloody carcasses of used-to-be people—ripped open from crotch to chest, guts spilling out over the stained pavement, eyes glassy, throats torn out.

Rose just feels numb.

She sets the photos down on Alec’s desk, sits back in his chair, and sighs heavily. He’s leaning against the wall, watching her carefully, ready to step forward at any moment; she can feel his eyes on her.

“You recognize this.” It isn’t a question, and she doesn’t even pretend.

“Yes,” she says simply, and struggles with how to phrase her next words. “I saw something just like this with Torchwood.”

He waits for her to continue, hoping she doesn’t say— “Alien.” Dammit. “We never actually caught the killer, but we determined origin and species. After the bodies stopped showing up, we just assumed it moved on or, hopefully, died. The one here probably came through the Rift.”

Hardy really doesn’t like the Rift. He didn’t mind it when he was ignorant of its existence, but now that he knows, it’s given him nothing but grief.

Well, and Rose, but he tries not to associate her with that godforsaken crack.

But seriously, if the Rift—Hardy always gets the feeling that when Rose talks about it, it’s supposed to be capitalized for importance—is a crack in the walls of the universe, then whoever’s supposed to fix it is slacking off. Hardy has half the mind to give them a ticket, but unless there’s homicide involved, it’s not really his jurisdiction.

Rose taps him on the shoulder.

“Alec? Where’re you at?”

He blinks and draws his attention back to the blonde at his desk. She’s peering at him with concern, which is ironic, considering she’s the one who is just over 90 pounds and can barely keep down solid food.

He nods. “Yeah, sorry, just spaced out for a mo. What were you saying?”

She keeps frowning, and it’s not a good look on her. “I said, I’ll call Jake and have him look into it. If it’s the same alien, Torchwood should still have the prototype weapon we came up with but never used.”

He bristles, shoulders stiffening. Even though he knows that this is going to lead nowhere but a fight, he can’t help himself.

“What do you mean by that?”

She sighs and shakes her head, pushing the pictures aside.

“That’s not what I meant, Alec, and you know it,” Rose says. “It’s just that Jake is…”

Hardy takes a deep breath. “What, more experienced, better-equipped, younger?”

Rose flinches, hurt flashing across her face like a slap. “What?! No! Alec, that has _nothing_ to do with this. Where the hell is this coming from?”

It’s coming from two years of suppressed tension, fear, and feelings of inadequacy; not that Rose knows, of course. Hardy thinks he’s done a decent job of hiding the internal panic attack he’s been having pretty much nonstop since she waltzed into Broadchurch and proceeded to throw his entire world into a tailspin.

He’s tried to keep cool, to just say, “Alright,” and move on without his life as if nothing changed. But that’s the thing: _Everything_ changed. And he could pinpoint the exact moment it did. It was the minute, second, moment he ran into a young blonde investigator poking her nose around his crime scene. If he’d known then that she would destroy his world and replace it with one much more complex and frightening, he would have run in the opposite direction and never looked back.

But he didn’t, and she did. Now, he wouldn’t trade Rose for anything, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t regret what she introduced him to.

Aliens. Parallel worlds. A whole universe that he’d never known about. Now he knows, and it’s not just humbling, it’s crippling. He sees exactly how tiny he is, and how insignificant. And Rose, that’s the thing, he wants to say. I’m so tiny as to be meaningless, and you’re one of the most important women in the whole of creation. What the hell are you doing here, in _Broadchurch,_ with _me,_ when you could be out _there_?!

He doesn’t say any of this. Instead, he says, “I don’t want you to run off and do somethin’ stupid! You can’t leap into the action anymore, you just _can’t._ ”

Rose goes stiff.

“Are you saying I can’t handle it?”

_Stop it, Hardy. Shut your mouth before you say something you really regret. Just stop it now._

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying!”

_Crap._

He freezes, mouth still open; ironically, it’s the same expression Rose is making, except her face is turning a dangerous shade of red and…is her eye twitching?

Rose gets to her feet and grabs the infamous leather jacket off the back of the seat, and starts to leave.

“Wait, Rose—” Alec starts to apologize, but Rose cuts him off.

“No,” she says. “No, I don’t want to hear it. Clearly, you think I’m incapable of taking care of myself.”

She whirls and stalks out, leaving Hardy to either wallow in his misogynistic mistakes or follow her in desperation. Apparently allergic to hearing his words bounce back at him, he chases after Rose. She makes it out the door and into the parking lot before he catches up to her.

“Rose!” he calls, reaching for her arm.

Neither is sure what, exactly, happens next. Later, after the paramedics have arrived at the scene, Hardy will describe it as a series of snapshots rather than conscious actions.

Hardy reaching for her arm, two steps behind but not nearly close enough.

Rose pushing blindly forwards, tears running down her cheeks.

Bystanders watching without the slightest idea of what’s going on between the harried-looking man in need of a shave and the red-faced, teary blonde.

No one can remember what happens next, precisely, because they all saw it from a different perspective. But they can all agree that the sharp gust of wind that dropped them all on their arses came out of nowhere, and seemed to originate in the general vicinity of the crying girl.

Rose feels a tremor run up her limbs and staggers to a stop. The world spins around her and all the blood in her head rushes south. She wavers and drops like a rock, cracking her skull hard against the pavement.

The last thing she hears before the screaming is a woman whispering in her ear and saying, “ _Hold on a bit longer, love. Not long now.”_

 


	14. In the Shadow of the Valley of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose closes her eyes

The last thing she hears before the screaming is a woman whispering in her ear and saying, “ _Hold on a bit longer, love. Not long now.”_

She groans and stares up at the cloudless sky. Disoriented, she lifts a hand to her throbbing head and touches her fingertips to her temple; they come away wet with blood. She blinks at her red-coated fingers numbly, not really processing what’s happened. Distantly, in the part of her brain conditioned by years of time travel and running for her life, she knows that she’s going into shock.

She hears someone calling her name, and Alec’s face fills her vision. She feels him pull her into his arms, cradling her against his chest. Her anger seeps away, replaced with a steady feeling of peace, and she can’t even remember why they were fighting. Love’s silly like that.

Her vision is getting blurrier, and Alec is frowning. _He shouldn’t frown,_ she thinks, _it makes him look grouchy._ She knows in her heart that he’s a good man, even if everyone else thinks badly of him. He pretends it doesn’t bother him. but she knows better. It hurts him.

“Rose, the ambulance will be here any minute,” he says urgently.

What’s he so worried about? she thinks hazily. Doesn’t he know?

…Know what? She doesn’t know. Is he supposed to know? It’s important, Rose is sure of that, something very important that’s _just…_ out of her reach. She stretches out her arm for it, feels her fingers brush against it…

No, wait, that’s Alec’s leg. He catches her hand in his and entwines their fingers, squeezing tightly. He’s concerned. She feels bad that she’s made him hurt. All she wants is to make it stop hurting.

She wants everything to stop hurting.

“Rose, don’t go to sleep!” He smacks her gently on the shoulder. “You’ve got to stay awake.”

He’s right, and she knows it. They both know that she’s going to die. It’s strange. She’s known that the end was coming for so long, and now it’s here, and she can’t bring herself to care. All that time, and she isn’t scared. She should be terrified of what happens next, but she isn’t.

“Rose, please,” he pleads with her, as if that will change things.

Rose tries to clear the fog from her mind, but it’s so hard, and it would be so easy to just stop trying and let the fog envelope everything. It would bring peace with it, and she wants that, so badly.

She wants to hang on for him, because he doesn’t deserve this. He shouldn’t have to kneel here, trousers splattered with her drying blood, while she passes away in his arms. He’s been through enough already. He’s lost so much.

_Not as much as we have._

When did her life become measured by loss?

She sees their faces, all the people she has had to say good-bye to. Dad, Gwyneth, everyone on the Game Station, Mickey, Pete’s World Jackie, the people at Canary Wharf, Harriet Jones Prime Minister, Donna. All the people she couldn’t save, as a shop girl, as the Doctor’s girl, as Jack’s girl, as a Preacher, as a Torchwood operative. As Alec’s girl.

(she likes being someone’s girl, it makes her feel the good kind of fuzzy)

The Meta-Crisis Doctor, her second chance. After Team TARDIS piloted the Earth back into her orbit, he took her aside and kissed her, long and hot and full of two lives’ worth of restrained passion. It was the kind of kiss that made her dizzy and weak in the knees, the kind of kiss that isn’t supposed to exist outside sappy chick flicks and trashy romance novels.

She watched him burn, minutes away from a new life together. She will never forget the screaming, the pain in his eyes, the blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. Jack and Mickey holding her back. Screaming. She was screaming, the new Doctor was screaming, Donna was screaming. Jack was silent, but she knew he was screaming, too, on the inside.

It wakes her up in the middle of the night. At least, it used to.

Jack, her other half. Falling asleep curled up together, watching movies, laughing, joking, trading playful shots and helping out. Cooking together—he cooked, she swiped vegetables off the cutting board. Fighting together. Loving together. Loving the Doctor together.

Jack, falling, his skeleton lit up by the Dalek’s killing blow. Jack, heart silent, blood draining from his face, body going cold under her fingers.

Sucking in a breath and convulsing, eyes open wide but unseeing. He’s with that universe’s Ianto now, and even though her heart aches at the thought, she’s happy for him, too. It wasn’t fair to expect him to wait for her. Besides, the other Ianto seemed like a nice man, just like his Pete’s World counterpart. In another life, she’d have liked to take him out for drinks and given him the requisite “He’s like a brother to me, hurt him and the Doctor and I will drop you into a sun” speech.

Now she’ll never get the chance. Funny, life is.

The Doctor.

She doesn’t want to watch anyone else leave, to watch them die because she didn’t do enough to save them.

She is so weak she couldn’t roll over if she wanted. She can barely lift her head. She has just enough energy to lift her hand—slow, shaking terribly, veins pulsing against her pallid skin—and lay it against his face. She can’t feel the stubble under her fingers, she can’t feel him cover her hand with his.

“It’s alright,” she says. It isn’t a lie.

Strangely, she doesn’t mind that she’s about to die. She does regret, however, not getting the chance to tell Alec she loves him. And, she’ll miss Torchwood, and Broadchurch, and her family. She’s sad that she won’t get to see Tony grow up, or that she won’t be there for Jake and Ianto’s wedding (it’s only a matter of time and everyone knows it, too).

But, there’s a kind of peace coming that she’s never felt before. She can see it on the horizon, getting closer and closer, and bringing darkness with it. For the longest time, she was afraid of the dark, because she’s seen firsthand what hides in the inky black and the unknown. There’s something waiting in the darkness, waiting for her. She’s known about it for weeks, she’s seen it in her dreams. She’s felt it, looming over her shoulder, getting closer and closer. Now, it’s here for her.

She’s not afraid anymore.

“It’s alright,” she repeats. “Everything is going to be alright.”

She closes her eyes. She can feel it, the end, and it’s always seemed silly to her when people on TV died closing their eyes. But, now, she figures that she must know what they were thinking. She doesn’t want to just pass away, and have Alec think she’s still there for a few seconds before horrible reality sets in and he sees her empty eyes. She wants to die like this.

Rose closes her eyes, and drifts away.

 


	15. An Awful Lot of Running

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rose opens her eyes

_Rose opens her eyes._

_She’s falling through nothingness, and it hurts. God, it hurts more than anything she could have imagined. It’s like her skin being ripped off, and she can feel every nanosecond of it. It’s agony, rippling through every centimeter of her being, and she’s still conscious, still feeling everything. Cell by cell, layer by layer, she is being flayed alive._

_Alive._

_She’s alive._

_What the hell?_

_She can’t be alive, she remembers dying. She isn’t breathing, her heart isn’t beating. Blood is just sitting in her veins, doing nothing, because there’s no life to pump it through her body._

_Yet. Yeah. And yet._

_She doesn’t know how, but she knows, without a doubt, she’s still alive._

_She’s still falling. It makes no sense, she should have hit the ground by now. It’s taking too long. It should all be over, she should be dead. Months of waiting and this was what it was all for? To fall for the rest of eternity?_

_She keeps her eyes open even though her body wants to close them. She wants to see everything, because despite the blinding pain, it is beautiful. She doubts she’ll ever see anything more beautiful again. She’s falling towards a light, so bright that it stings her eyes to look, and it’s a writhing ball of golden snakes with crystal eyes. It’s bubbling molten lava, a miniature sun…that’s not so miniature. As she falls closer, she realizes, it’s actually very large, and getting closer every second!_

_Besides, the burning in her eyes doesn’t begin to compare to the pain she’s feeling as something shreds her skin. She can feel the claws_ riiiiiping _through her skin, gouging canyons in muscles and tendons; tentacles wriggling through holes and burrowing deep into her bones, causing cracks and breaks._

_She isn’t falling anymore—mostly because she landed hard on her ass._

_Scowling, she stands up, shaky on her feet, and brushes nonexistent dust off her butt. She looks around, taking in the darkness surrounding her. She can feel the ground under her feet, but when she looks down, there’s nothing there._

_She stomps her foot a few times to check that yes, whatever is supporting her is solid and won’t give out. Then she takes a few steps forward, relatively confidant that she’s not going to plunge to her death because of weak architecture._

_The floor gives out._

_She shrieks and wheels her arms frantically, desperately trying to backtrack away from the ledge she just inadvertently stepped off. She falls roughly with an_ oomph _, but at least it’s backwards onto her ass and not forwards into another round of_ Alice in Wonderland. _She heaves a sigh out of relief and puts her hand to the ground to brace herself as she gets back to her feet. Her hand finds empty air._

_It takes two tries to stand up._

_So, the path is narrow, and apparently, doesn’t go_ that _way. Good to know. This time, when she starts walking, she is very careful to test with her foot before going anywhere._

_She starts walking._

_She doesn’t know how long she walks, because it feels like seconds and days at the same time, and she isn’t sure which is accurate._

_There’s a woman waiting for her._

_The woman is young and old at the same time, and there’s something strange about her. Stranger than anything in the universe. She emanates light, a single bright spot in the darkness; golden glitter rains off her like she sheds it. She’s naked, and she is beautiful._

_There is no cryptic messages, no prophetic mutterings. The woman looks at her, and she doesn’t need to ask any questions. The woman is beyond trickery._

_The woman holds out a hand to her, and she can’t resist taking it._

_Their hands touch, and she smiles, because she knows who it is. The puzzle pieces have fallen into place. The radiation poisoning, the dying, the burning, the nightmares. The feeling of being watched and waited for, constantly. She understands now. She remembers—everything._

_It all makes sense._

_Her skin tingles, pins and needles everywhere, but it no longer feels like it’s peeling away. She’s surrounded by warmth, and it feels good, like a summer day in London, back when she slept in as long as possible, buried under layers of poofy blankets, until she woke up to Chinese take-out and a day filled with normal things. Warm, like tea and chips, hot chocolate in the pubs with Mickey shouting at the match, the TARDIS._

_She laughs. She feels nothing but warmth, love, peace. Her body is dissolving, falling away like sparkly confetti, and she feels fuzzy. There’s a tingle in her feet; it spreads, crawling up her legs into every inch of her, and it_ hurts. _It doesn’t feel like her skin’s being ripped off, it feels like it’s being stitched back together, and the stitch-er has no clue what they’re doing._

_It hurts, yeah, more than anything. But, it’s a good pain. She knows when it’s over, it’ll have been worth it, and she’ll never have to hurt again. It’s a slow process—maybe it’s fast, she can’t tell. Time doesn’t exist here._

_Time will never exist here, ever again._

_All she knows is that everything is as it should be. This has always been meant to happen. A fixed point. She’s been running for so long, longer than the Doctor, longer than Jack, longer than Alec. She’s been running from the creatures hiding in the dark. She’s tired of it. It’s time to let them catch up._

_It’s time to stop running, and face the big, Bad Wolf._

_Rose closes her eyes and she let’s go._

 


	16. Saying Goodbye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which everyone says goodbye

Dark figures around a dark casket on a dark day. Everyone stands in respect for the dead, even those who hadn't outwardly done so in life. Hardy's amazed to see how many people had come out to honor her.

It's a great ceremony, but that doesn't make Hardy feel any better.

He doesn't think anything will ever help the hurt or the guilt. He's lost people before, of course, but it's different this time. This time, the body being lowered into the ground is Rose.

A week ago, she collapsed in the Broadchurch Police Department station parking lot, and died in his arms as the paramedics were pulling in. The official ruling is heart failure, but Hardy knows it isn't that simple; nothing is anymore. Rose's death certificate should say DEATH BY TORCHWOOD. That's the truth; that's what killed her.

Hardy didn't know her for very long—two years is nothing in the grand scheme, especially to a time traveller like Rose—but he'd loved her. And apparently, he wasn't the only one.

He spotted Rose's mum and stepdad earlier; he'd been understandably surprised to learn that her stepdad was _the_ Pete Tyler. That certainly explained the designer clothes.

Jake and a man Hardy takes to be the infamous Ianto Jones stand off to the side with a group of black-clad military types. Torchwood showing their respects for their fallen comrade.

Hardy stands with Ellie and her sons, and the rest of the Broadchurch police department, and everyone watches the service. It's funny—not funny ha-ha, but funny strange—that his first visit to London since arriving in Broadchurch is to attend a funeral.

He's been to quite a few funerals, even a few for fellow police officers, but the funeral of Rose Tyler is singular in his experiences. As far as he knows, Torchwood isn't actually part of the military and made up solely of well-trained and well-armed civilians. And yet, he watches a team of operatives file up and salute. A bugle begins to play and the volley salute, shots tearing through the silence.

A lone figure stands under a tree at the edge of the cemetery, alongside a blue police public call box, seemingly unseen by the rest of the funeral attendees. She watches silently as the coffin is lowered into the ground by stiff-lipped agents, and has to turn away before tears escape.

She feels empty inside. Her two hearts beat sympathetically for those mourning a lost loved one. She wishes she could take the pain away, but even if she were to approach them and assure them that she's alright and very much alive, they wouldn't believe her.

She wouldn't believe her either if she were them. She barely believes it herself, and she's living it.

After all, how could she have possibly known that Time Lords have only one heart before their first regeneration?

The woman with frizzy red hair and far too many freckles swallows a sob and blinks away tears, and stuffs her hands in her pockets. Her fingertips brush against something cold, and she pulls out a glowing key. She stares at it, remembering the chunk of TARDIS coral sitting in a box labeled TYLER, ROSE (DESK) in a Torchwood storage facility. She wraps her fingers around the key and lifts her chin, making a silent resolution. Death doesn't have to be the end. It can be a new beginning, too; the Doctor taught her that.

Dirt cascades atop Rose Tyler's casket.

The Bad Wolf walks away.

 


	17. Regenerate Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Bad Wolf visits Cardiff looking for an old friend

**300 YEARS LATER**

**CARDIFF, WALES, EARTH (aka SOL III, TERRA, TELLUS, GAIA, RAVOLOX, ANTYKHON, BIG BALL, etc)**

**SOL GALACTIC SYSTEM, MUTTER'S SPIRAL**

**SECTOR 8023, THIRD QUADTRANT OF THE SHADOW PROCLAMATION**

**EARTH YEAR 2008, LATE APRIL/EARLY MAY**

The woman in the leather jacket steps off the carriage and flips down her sunglasses. After the long train ride, it feels good to stand on solid, unmoving ground again; she's been to plenty of places, and solid ground is always a plus.

Even though it's the beginning of summer, it's still a bit chilly, and she pulls her jacket closer. It's more of a reflex, really, because she doesn't feel temperatures like she used to. One of the perks of her new life.

She opts not to catch a cab and instead walks the distance from the train station to Roald Dahl Plass. She revels in the culture of urban Cardiff—it's...quaint, especially after the bazaars on Shan Shen and the Festival of Offerings on Akhaten, God, that was a good time.

No matter where in the universes she goes, Earth has a special place in her heart—like a favorite rest stop on a trip you take often—and the people who live on it are at the very least entertaining. Watching them scurry around their meaningless lives with such fervor is adorable, and fills her with the same fuzzy feeling as puppies as arrogant dictators.

Eventually, she makes her way to the famous postcard setting, and while it's crawling with camera-happy tourists, the picturesque views and iconic statue don't even phase her. A woman with a purpose, she strides across the Plass without even glancing at the gleaming tower, her foots clicking softly against the stone. She has a definite destination in mind, and as she rounds the Plass and gets down towards the Bay, she sees it.

A small tourist information booth, purposely kept off the beaten path in a place strategically meant to deter Hawaiian-shirt wearing, souvenir-toting, culturally-ignorant swine from visiting it.

The overwhelmingly unwelcome facade does nothing to dissuade her as she pushes open the door and disturbs the carefully-constructed cover story of a certain semi-secret organization.

A little bell dings overhead as the door swings open, and she scowls, fighting the urge to dismantle it or melt it. There's no one behind the desk when she enters, but after a moment, a man comes out from a side room, wiping his hand on a towel. He's young—younger than she remembers, but damn, she's not complaining. After all, she's old, not dead—and dressed impeccably in a perfectly tailored suit. He scans her head to toe as she does the same to him—although he doesn't appear to be undressing her with his eyes, so there's at least once difference between them—and she can't blame him. She supposes that she is a little vain this time around.

She knows what he sees when he looks at her, and after fifty years, she still isn't used to it. She likes this body the best, though, and she's been quite careful with it. She'd hate for something unseemly to happen to it. Short auburn hair that falls around her face in soft waves, pale blue eyes a bit too large for her face and a nose a bit too pointed, and high cheekbones that someone once described as capable of cutting glass. This body has a predisposition towards shirts a shade too low-cut and jeans a size too tight, and the moment she spotted her leather jacket in a shop on Salus, she fell in love all over again.

Every time she looks in the mirror, she knows why she likes this body so much. She looks like _him._

Normally, she'd pretend to be a regular tourist by browsing the maps and brochures, but she's in a bit of a hurry. Fate of the universe and all that. Normally, she lets the Doctor take care of that kind of stuff, because as a rule, it always involves humans, and he's just better with them than she is.

So instead of trying to pretend she's even remotely human, she leans forward and splays her hands on the counter, every inch the harmless girl instead of a highly dangerous, volatile, and questionably mentally-disturbed Time Lady.

“Are you Ianto Jones?” she asks. She already knows the answer, because after all, they've met before, but he doesn't know that she knows and he doesn't know that they've met before because they haven't yet, and it's important not to endanger timelines. Even she can't do that, not that she hasn't tried.

He eyes her carefully and cautiously, as if he isn't sure she won't bite him or take off his limb. He must decide she's not a threat—wouldn't he be surprised—because after a moment of hesitation, he takes her hand. Her handshake is firm and brisk and she lets go too soon, but he gets the chance to notice that their hands fit together perfectly.

“Yes,” he says eventually, “may I help you with something?”

She laughs, and it's nothing like her laugh used to be. She used to have such a pretty laugh, but now even she notices that she comes across as slightly unhinged. It doesn't help that she is, in fact, slightly unhinged. Centuries of isolation and segregation will do that to a person.

“Oh, I hope so. I really do.”

She pulls of the sunglasses, revealing golden-tinged eyes, and smiles, tongue between her teeth.

“I need to talk to you about the man who calls himself Captain Jack Harkness. I'm the Bad Wolf, by the way—hello!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep an eye out for the third installment! This one will be Doctor Who/Torchwood, and may or may not feature Alec Hardy.
> 
> ~Row


End file.
